Memories
by lucy forst
Summary: On a Sunday, Severus Snape remembers not one but both the women he loved and he offers Lily a little more than his apologies...Who is this other woman? Sequel to Redemption.


Disclaimer: The characters in this story all belong to J.K. Rowling, though the plot is mine. Please feel free to offer your criticism, it is always appreciated.

This one's for my mother, and for everybody who misses their own.

**Memories**

_Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose._

_-From the television show __The Wonder Years_

It's Sunday again. The air is dry. The sky is cloudless and blue. It had rained last week, as I had predicted, and today I predict a hot afternoon. I'm here with my wonderments once more, though today I've brought an umbrella with me. I hated the thought of leaving you here, out in the merciless rain and the intense sunshine unshielded. I know you must think I'm insane for talking to a tombstone and telling a dead woman I want to protect her from the harsh weather. It's just that, you're not dead to me yet and I wonder if you ever will be. Seems strange doesn't it, this time? It's their time now, ours is gone, but I'm still here, waiting. A twist of Fate, some might say, or Dumbledore's strategic mind but I would blame it on my stubborn will to fight for what I hold dearest.

I'm not the kind of man who can show his emotions freely, you know that, but sometimes looking back at you, looking at your son with Weasly's daughter, I wish I were. There are people I know of who blame my state of mind on my childhood experiences. Dunderheads, I say. I know my childhood better than any of those Muggle psychologists Malfoy took me to see. Of course, for him it was purely entertainment but for me it was one hundred percent of utter and complete hell (and I will make sure that more people mistake him for Narcissa henceforth.) I know that in my childhood experiences there was a tall man with fair hair and blue eyes. I cannot remember his face, though, for it is always shadowed in my memories. I remember a thin woman with pale skin, black eyes and long, straight black hair. I cannot remember her voice, though, for I always blocked it out. I remember how he used to beat her and I remember how I used to run away to the river for I could not bear those screams. I was such a coward, couldn't even protect my own mother and I'm _still_ a coward for I couldn't protect you.

I remember the last time I went home. I saw him leaving with a suitcase in each hand. I remember him having to look up at me for I had grown taller than the tall man. That tall, now short man was my father. I don't think you've ever seen because he never came out of the house, except for buying liquor. That was the one time I liked going back for then I was taller than him, I was stronger than him, I was not the stick-like boy whom he could slap across the face at whim, anymore. I had a wand on my belt and I could use it very, very efficiently – he knew that.

But I was too late.

I could not save my mother. I took her to St. Mungo's. I applied for as many jobs as I could get but in the end, she too slipped from my hands. I remember her last few days, I was with her then. She'd asked me t take her home. I think it was not the old age that killed her, she was fairly young to die, but the broken heart. I wondered then how she could have loved my father after all those horrid things he had done to her but now I realize that love is blind, blind as a bat and that though he may not have loved her, though he may have detested me, but in her mind he was always the gentleman who swept her off her feet.

I remember her last words to me. She was pale and frail but her waist length hair was as dark as ever. I remember playing with that hair as she did her chores. I remember the way she pushed me away every time I did that. I knew when I came home that year she knew of the mark on my left hand, though she never said anything about it. Only that day she reached out from her bed, buried in fresh linen sheets, and held my hand. She used to be as pale as I am but now she was just _white_.

"Severus," she said in a calm voice, "I'm going to him," and I remember that, that day was the first time in years that she'd looked into my eyes. I covered her hand with mine. I had always remembered my mother as a warm and fresh smelling being but now she was cold and the scent of decay lingered over her. She turned my hand around, for the first time her touch was gentle, and unbuttoned the cuffs on my sleeve then she rolled them up. I knew what she was doing.

It was my left hand.

She ran her long, thin fingers along the skull and the serpent that emerged from. She looked at it for a while and then looked up at me with those black, almond-shaped eyes and she looked at me so fearlessly.

It felt good.

She was probably the first person who wasn't scared out of their wits by the Dark Mark. She was my mother, the only one I had and I had a question for her.

"Why?"

I asked and she retraced her hand, burying herself in the blankets of the bed she once shared with my father and in her calm, quiet voice she said, "Because he's all I have." Then she looked up to the heavens and closed her eyes and even with all the power I had accumulated, with all the money, all the strength and all the knowledge there was nothing I could do to make her breath again. There is _still _nothing I can do to forget her last words.

He was all she had, that I understood and suddenly I felt like little Sev again; little Sev who came up just to her knee and followed her all over the house, occasionally tripping on her long, black skirt and pulling at her sleeve every time he had a question. He's all she had, but then, what was I?

_Nothing. _

And with that she was added to the extremely short list of women whom I had loved, women who could never love me back and the women who had died with me still loving them. She was the first name on that list.

You were the last.

When Malfoy took me to see a Muggle psychologist or whatever they're called I knew why he had taken me there. It was a joke, a cruel one. She had straight, dark red hair, a fair complexion and green eyes. But they weren't like yours. Not one bit. No pair of eyes in the world, except your son's, can be like yours and even then his eyes are not nearly as enchanting. Believe me, I've observed.

Remember the time you told me to go back to my friends? I wish I would have told you then and there that you were the only friend I had, that you were the only person who didn't care about the how oily my hair was or if I looked like a string bean, you didn't care if I was the smartest or the darkest wizard, if I let you copy off my homework or if I didn't have enough of money to buy another pair of underpants; all you cared about was _me_ and I let you down. What kind of fool am I? Can you classify?

I can't.

I don't think there's a limit to my foolery or my insanity. I don't think there is a limit to the number of times that my mind travels back to those memories. I don't that there's a limit for the words I could describe you with. You are...

My best friend

My worst enemy

My heart

My soul

My obsession

My curse

My weakness

My strength

And you are the sole reason that every morning I find the power in my to open my eyes and keep breathing, that every night I find the peace in me to sleep and the reason I give up my stupid pride every Sunday to walk down here, just to see you again.

_Once._

I have nothing to give you except my apologies and I hope that you can accept them. If you still cannot, I understand and I'll wait till the day you can, even if that means waiting forever. But there is something that I _can_ offer you, except my apologies of course, because I need to see who I really am. I know that there will be people across the river, standing there, waiting for me for all the wrong reasons and I don't want you to be one of them and so Lily, this is my humble peace offering to you – my memories.

My memories are all I have left with me and you make a home in most of them, for I lay claim on nothing else. My mother is gone, Dumbledore is gone and so are you, in a way, and for the rest of the world I'm talking to ghosts. I could not keep my mother with me – she was my father's. I could not keep Albus with me – he was Harry's but I can keep you with me, safely inside my heart, for I have these memories.

For I have _only_ these memories.


End file.
